INTRODUCTION
The piece we devised, The Turning, was based on the HBO mockumentary style TV show, “What We Do In The Shadows”. Before beginning the process of creating our own show, we were all either fans of the show already, or excited by the premise of a dark comedy musical based around a tight-knit group of vampires.
MY ROLE – ADMIN AND DESIGN
My role in the group was originally admin and social media manager, then when James was later added to the group, I was our admin and designer. Early on in the process, I had made us a Teams page for everyone to upload their contributions to, but people opted to send materials into our WhatsApp group. At the very top of the research and development week, I received some news which made it more difficult for me to contribute to the group as much as others, but thankfully our writers were more than ready to take on my responsibilities. I also stepped down from being one of the major characters in our piece as it had some quite intense moments. Upon reflection, I realise I could’ve better dealt with this situation by being blunt with my group about what I was going through, as I found that people were more frustrated than sympathetic as they weren’t aware of what I was going through, and assumed I couldn’t be bothered.
I designed our final show logo, based off a sketch Suzi provided. I had originally toyed around with the idea of the ‘T’ in the word ‘Turning’ being a fang or a wooden stake, but we then landed on having the title inside of a bat with black and dark grey dashes, and a dark red into black background with small drips of blood hanging off each point of the bat’s wings. I found it difficult to do this being a person with little to no drawing skills, and someone who has never used artistic editing software before. I ended up using a number of different apps in an attempt to make the show logo look as professional as possible. I also opted to create it entirely without the use of AI, because I decided I, as a consumer, would rather see a logo which isn’t entirely perfect but has clearly been made with care and love than a logo that is nothing more than a prompt fed into a computer. If I were tasked with this again in the future, I would reach out to artists who have made things similar to what I’m envisioning and ask for advice and recommendations. That being said, I was pleased with how the show logo turned out and would happily take on that role again in the future!
COMMERCIAL FUTURE – MARKETING AND VENUE
When considering the commercial future of ‘The Turning”, it is important to think about who the target audience would be, and what sort of venue would best suit the show.
A big portion of our potential demographic would likely be mid-teens to early thirties, think back to who fans of the Twilight series would’ve been, and think of ever present teen angst. Therefore, the most effective marketing tactic would be short form videos on social media – TikTok and Instagram Reels (the largest global age group is 25-34 on both Instagram and TikTok, similarweb.com).
Our show would be better suited to a smaller venue, rather than a big, flashy one as it would aid the atmosphere we wanted to create – think Little Shop of Horrors at the Westside Theatre in New York, a small venue seating 270 people, making the audience feel like they are a part of the story, rather than just sitting and watching it unfold. A venue like Jermyn Street Theatre in Piccadilly Circus would be ideal for our show, as it has a very small number of seats (70) and is keen to showcase LGBTQ+ & female writers, as well as new works.
It’s also useful to think about locations where the show would thrive, of course London has a mix of people, and new people going to the city every day, but it’s important to also think about places which are known to be filled with eccentric people, and people open to new ideas. One of these places is Brighton! Brighton is known as the gay capital of the UK, and has a total of 11% of people saying their sexual orientation is part of the LGBT+ community (https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/joint-strategic-needs-assessment-jsna/population-and-population-groups/sexual-orientation-brighton-hove). Another place where our musical would likely thrive is the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, an annual festival of performing arts where creatives take new pieces of work to showcase to an open-minded audience.
BUDGET & PROFIT
During the development of our piece, we didn’t have an actual budget as we were working with the things we had on hand, so I have made a mock budget based on if we were to have almost two weeks to perform in a theatre.
Let’s say we had a starting budget of £5000, there are many factors to consider but let’s start with the venue! I found a theatrical hire price guide, and for 10 days in a venue that would cost £1250. That is one quarter of the budget gone, but luckily that price also comes with two dressing rooms!
Next comes the cost of the creative team, we were working with 2 music writers, 2 book writers, 1 dramaturg, 1 admin, 1 social media, 1 choreographer and 1 costumer. That is 9 people to have to pay. We could pay a daily rate to each creative of £50 (assuming everyone works for 7 days), and that would cost £3150, leaving us with £600 in the budget.
We had 9 cast members, so assuming they would be paid the same rate as the creatives, that is £4500 for 10 days of work for every person.
With all of these costs, we would be at a loss of -£3950 before taking ticket sales into account.
The venue I got the hire price for, The Ron Barber Studio in Birmingham, has a capacity of 120. If we charged £7 per ticket and sold out every show, we would make £8400 in ticket sales.
When taking this into account, we would be making a profit of £4450. This money could then be split among cast and creatives as more money for their hard work, or it could be pumped into continuing the show and building a brighter future for it.
CONCLUSION AND REFLECTION
This project has definitely given me a much better appreciation for the amount of time, love, and skill it takes to create a brand new piece of theatre. It’s something I would be interested in being involved with again in the future, preferably in a much more hands on role. I realised through the process I have a slight tendency to be a perfectionist, in the sense that I would read through the script and have ideas of what I would’ve done instead to make the speech flow much more smoothly, though I kept those things to myself as I was worried about stepping on anyone’s toes. Something I think I would work to do differently in the future is making sure everyone knows at every step what they should be doing.
I would also be more vocal in the future, instead of letting people just post things in a group chat where things can be easily lost in the flood of other messages, I’d have reminded people to post them on the Teams page I had set up especially for those materials. It would’ve also been helpful to know how the people in the group worked best before we got started, it seemed that a lot of the team found it easy to focus for a long time without needing a break, but unfortunately for me that is quite opposite to how I thrive in a working environment.
This has been a very enlightening project to work on, letting me know what sorts of people I would like to work with in the future, the roles I would be best suited to as part of a collaborative process and how a piece comes together, from creation to rehearsal.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.oldrep.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Theatrical-Hire-Price-Guide-22_23.pdf
